Correct Reasoning in Philosophy: Significance to Man’s Being Social

It pays to learn correct reasoning in Philosophy. It is really practicable in almost all aspects of our life like in communication and socialization. How?

So this essay identifies the importance of correct reasoning and its pertinent academic subjects (e.g. Logic, Debate, and Critical Thinking) to language and communication.

Essentially, this discourse explains how Correct Reasoning in Philosophy plays a vital role in man’s being social.

One of the strikingly evident dimensions of being human is his being social. Indeed, “no man is an island” because nobody can healthily live as a human being without in any way socializing with others. But man’s being social essentially involves that he communicates with fellow humans. Ineludibly, socialization implies interacting with others, having communication as the usual form of interaction.

Correct Reasoning in Philosophy and Communication

Now, the main thesis of this article is this: Correct reasoning plays a vital role in man’s being a communicative being. In fact, even the so-called non-verbal communication has to be rational or logical, otherwise no real understanding could be possible.

Centering on verbal communication which is more utilized, our concern splits primarily between two things: (1) the way we convey our message,and(2) the way we understand what others state. As you will see, either as a sender (source) or receiver of information, we should and actually do use reasoning.

For one thing, correct reasoning teaches us that for communication to be effective, we as speaker or writer must speak or write in a language that others understand and in a way that best represents the information we want to transmit. As listener or reader on the other hand, we must at least be discerning and critical so as not to misinterpret the speaker.

As speakers, we are in most cases engaged in establishing the truth or acceptability of what we say or express. Hence, we are most of the times dealing with proving, creating arguments, or in short, reasoning as a way of relating to our listeners.

As listeners who try to understand the message we receive, we also do reasoning as means of analyzing the intended meaning of the speaker. In times we get confused and beg to disagree with the source, we raise our case also through arguments and reasoning.

Therefore, as communicators using language—either as source or receiver of information—we almost always use and do reasoning.

But what constitutes reasoning? What academic disciplines specialize in teaching about reasoning and in harnessing the students’ reasoning skills? The interrelated subjects named Logic (and other Philosophy subjects), Critical Thinking, and Debate help a lot in formally training people to have decent reasoning abilities.

Language and Reasoning

Language is the tool we use in communication. Although language may also refer to nonverbal communication such as the use of signs, symbols, gestures, or inarticulate sounds, we are more concerned here of language as denoting our use of spoken or written words as a communication system. In the pursuit of having a sound communication, studying language involves studying a particular language’s vocabulary, syntax, and grammar.

In various ways, the subjects that teach correct reasoning (such as Debate and Logic) provide sound principles concerning vocabulary, syntax, and grammar. About good usage of words (lexical choice), these subjects, for instance, teach about ambiguous, vague, and definite terms.

For instance, it is taught that a context, situation, and type of literature determine whether or not the term to be used is unequivocal. Indeed, some songs, poems, feature articles, and the like may favor terms that are vague or ambiguous for aesthetic purposes. But reasoning nevertheless stipulates that definite or exact terms must be generally employed especially if precision is the primary consideration in communication.

When it comes to organization of words in sentences (grammatical construction), correct reasoning allows us to choose between misleading and precise statements. The most common types of misleading sentences are the vague and ambiguous ones. A proposition is ambiguous when it has two or more distinct meanings; it is vague when its meaning cannot be determined with precision.

There are literary works that deliberately employ ambiguous and vague sentences like satires, comedy scripts, and poetry. Generally speaking nonetheless, correct reasoning dictates that precise statements be used, for misleadingones can lead to confusion and faulty reasoning.

Moreover, Logic and Debate scrupulously distinguish between the two basic kinds of reasoning—inductive and deductive—which are in many occasions both useful in communicating our ideas and expressing the points we wish to make.

The various forms and types of reasoning, the rules for the validity of arguments, the criteria for the truth of statements, the different types of informal fallacies, the norms in the way terms are defined, and the techniques to avoid ambiguity and vagueness in our expressions, among other things, are formally dealt with in subjects about correct reasoning.

Correct Reasoning in Philosophy and Being Social

In many ways therefore, “human communication and language are rational.” By this, we mean, among other things, that correct reasoning plays indispensable roles in properly using language and in having a clear communication.

And since communication is a very vital element of our being social, the subjects that improve our reasoning abilities, like Debate and Argumentation, essentially enhance as well our social skills and our nature as social beings … (Continue reading: The Importance of Critical Thinking and Logic)

© 2014 by Jensen DG. Mañebog/MyInfoBasket.com

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Reasoning and Debate: A Handbook and a Textbook by Jensen DG. Mañebog

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